


A Surrender in Ambergris

by Snowgrouse



Category: Original Work, Thief of Bagdad (1940), كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة | Kitaab 'alf layla wa-layla | One Thousand and One Nights
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Anal Sex (female receiving), Androgynous male character, Cunnilingus, Dark Het, Dominant Male Character, Erotica, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Heroine/Villain, Heterosexual Anal Sex (female receiving), Historical, Light BDSM, Magic, Middle Ages, PWP, Perfume, Romance, Scratching, Seduction, Shameless Smut, Slavery, Stripping, Submissive Female Character, Telepathic Sex, The Thousand And One Nights - Freeform, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Whipping, heterosexual anal sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-07 20:42:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3182459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowgrouse/pseuds/Snowgrouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaffar buys Yassamin at the slave market.</p><p>
  <i>Without a word, he drags her onto her feet and begins to tear at her clothes. She screams and she screams as she is thus defiled, shamed, but he ignores her cries as he dances around her, ripping her precious garments to pieces. Perhaps she had deserved this all along, she thinks as one by one, her silks flutter at her feet, for she is a bad woman, he now exposing her guilty flesh as he had exposed her wanton nature, leaving her defenseless, bare.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>And thus she stands in the centre of the room, naked, he still in his torn shirt and drawers, laughing at her. "Much better." And when she tries to cover her breasts, cover her sex with her hands, he but <b>purrs</b>, nuzzling her face. "Exactly what I was hoping to see in the back room at the slave market," he croons, "until you so cruelly deprived me of the pleasure of inspecting you." He lifts her hair from her face and smiles. "But you will not pass out on me this time, will you, my sweet? Hmm?"</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Exactly what it says on the tin. Glorious, shalwar-ripping romance smut with lols and fluff mixed in. Thanks to ACityMadeOfSong for the beta. All medieval gay fart jokes (c) Abu Nuwas.

***

"Four thousand dinars!" 

"I saw her first! Five thousand."

Yassamin slouches in her chains, weak from hunger, from thirst, barely aware of the men breaking out into fisticuffs. She can no longer keep her eyes open; there are but the sounds of fighting, of silk tearing--

But it is then that the hall falls silent. She can hear the men moving aside, a suffocated murmur of shock from somewhere behind her, and the girl standing next to her falls limp in her bonds, unconscious.

Yassamin opens her eyes. Her vision swims, but she can make out a man in blue, in white, taller than everyone else in the room, made even taller by his scarlet turban. He has drawn its tails over his face like an assassin, yet she recognises his eyes, eyes of an unearthly blue, so demoniacally bright they have paralysed the entire bazaar with fright.

 _Beware the evil eye,_ her nurse had always told her, had handed her charms as if she had known of the eyes in Yassamin's garden, watching her night and day, observing her, oppressing her--

The tall man steps, no, _glides_ closer to her, and he is not a man, not a man and she cannot breathe. His perfumes overwhelm her, and a man should not wear ambergris, should not move like a woman, no, no, and now he is lifting her chin with his fingertips and his zenith gaze makes her sway with vertigo --

"A hundred thousand dinars," he says, and her vision goes black. 

***

When she wakes up, it is to the sound of a fountain. Her every muscle aches; her throat is still parched from the heat of the desert, and as memory returns, a shock of fear sends her heart racing, snaps her eyes open. 

A slave girl approaches her bed, timid. "Good morning, mistress. Shall I bring your breakfast?"

Yassamin tries to speak, but can only cough at first, cough until she is curled double from the pain in her chest. There are tears in her eyes by the time the girl lifts a glass of hot, sweet tea to her lips, finally soothing her throat so that she may speak.

"Where am I?"

"In the house of Jaffar the Barmakid, mistress."

Jaffar the Barmakid. _Jaffar the Barmakid._ The very man who had come to her father to ask for her hand, and now it all makes sense--the unease he had awoken in her with his gait, his skills of witchcraft that had both intrigued her and repulsed her. He had been too far away for her to see his eyes, then, but now she knows.

 _"I have seen her,"_ he had said. _"In my crystal,"_ he had said.

Not just an old man she had been betrothed to against her will, then; no, no--he is no more and no less than her very nightmares made flesh. She had tried to run from him, but now he has caught her, evil itself come to claim her as bride--

And now the serving-maid has to take Yassamin's glass from her hand, for she feels lightheaded again, falling back onto the cushions once more. 

"Leave me," Yassamin murmurs, staring blankly at the richly embroidered fabrics, the fountains, the gilded blue tiles, and now it's as if those walls curve over her, closing in on her, suffocating her.

***

She had been starving, but now she has lost her appetite; she but nibbles on her pomegranate chicken, barely touches the rose-scented almond brittle. The slave girls try to coax her to eat more, almost forcing the sweets down her throat.

She pushes the girls aside. "You're fattening me up like a goose to be butchered, aren't you?"

They but titter nervously, hiding their smiles behind their veils. 

***

The only one who does not laugh at her, the boyish one they had called Halima, tells Yassamin she should not be afraid as she washes her, shaves her sex, rubs perfumed ointments onto her skin. "The master may seem frightening at first, but he can be the kindest and most generous of men if you but know how to please him," she says.

"And what if I should not wish to please him?" Yassamin groans as Halima eases the tip of a syringe into her anus. "And is this truly necessary?"

Halima feigns shock. "But, my lady! You have been starving for days; your guts have grown slow and God knows what kinds of poisons have accumulated in your body. We must get the ill humours out of you," she says as she slowly fills Yassamin with warm rosewater. "Perhaps a good cleansing will make you more inclined to please him."

"Never," Yassamin winces. "I would rather die."

And now Halima laughs at her, too.

***

When the nightfall prayers are over, Halima takes her to a small, private room in Jaffar's quarters. Yet to Yassamin's surprise, it's not a bedroom, nor an entertaining-chamber, no: it's more akin to a small library. Its walls are lined with shelves and alcoves, filled with hundreds, if not thousands of books and scrolls.

"The master's reading room," Halima says and gestures for Yassamin to take a seat at the low table in the centre of the room. "This room houses but his favourite tomes; the main library is about twenty times the size of this one."

"Where are you going?" 

"The master wants to see you in private. He told me he will be with you in but moments, and that you should feel free to help yourself to the books." Halima grins and nods towards the shelves covering the western wall. "Personally, I would recommend that section. Good night."

Out of spite, Yassamin goes through all the other shelves first. As she had expected, most of the volumes deal with science and the art of engineering. In fact, very few deal in magic, she observes: clearly not the sort of literature Jaffar would want to offer his guests, then. Quite wise of him; she imagines most guests, if given the right spells, would immediately use them to escape this house. 

For there is something about this place that fills her with dread, a sort of weight, a tingle in her limbs that she cannot define. The entire palace must be ensorcelled, she thinks--that would only make sense. And the most terrifying thing about this magic is that it even feels _pleasant_ at times. It's akin to what she has heard of the songs of sirens and pairis: a low, soft hum that entices her, wraps her within its perfume.

Yes, perfume: that unmistakable scent of ambergris she had smelled upon Jaffar in the slave market, interwoven with the sweetness of honey, roses and musk, weighed down by sandalwood. It is the scent of a woman, a grown, lustful woman out to seduce: a perfume of the sort she has only ever smelled on courtesans. 

By the time she reaches the western wall, she is reeling, drunk: the shelves themselves are made of sandalwood, and the fragrance is stronger here, embracing her like a soft-limbed mistress. Despite herself, she lets herself be enveloped by its sweetness, and as her hand falls upon a thick, blue volume, she could swear the book _trembles,_ as if from a lover's caress.

 _The Book of Ninety-Nine Red Blossoms,_ the frontispiece reads as she spreads the book out upon the table. And now, she laughs, because of course, of course: what else could it be but a manual on the arts of love? A shiver of illicit delight runs through her as she flicks through the book, seeking out the illustrations, just as she had done as a young girl in her father's library. For if one might get caught reading things one shouldn't be reading, might risk the book being confiscated any moment, one should always head for the juiciest material first, is that not true?

Yet none of the illustrations in her father's cheap, lewd books could compare to these. The miniatures have been painted with the most precious of minerals, powdered gemstones, the lovers' jewellery rendered in gold; materials she has only ever seen used for holy books. Each illustration is accompanied by a poem inscribed in the most beautiful of calligraphies, as if the dirty verses were sacred in and of themselves: it's outright blasphemous in its boldness, she thinks, and most certainly heathen. Yet what astonishes her the most is the fact that the people in the illustrations--and there are many--have been painted in a style far more realistic than any she has ever seen before. And in each and every illustration, if it does not depict only women or boys, the men are tall, as lean as cheetahs, with rakishly thin moustaches, their eyes painted in crushed turquoise and lapis lazuli.

The gall of the man, the narcissism--! This shocks her far more than the intimacies portrayed in the illustrations do--it's different to now see these acts performed not by some stylised figures but by a man one recognises. Well, barely, yet she recognises Jaffar still, groaning as she leafs through the pages. "Yes, I am sure you asked the artist to exaggerate there," she mumbles at the flexibility, at the endowment of the hundred miniature Jaffars now rutting before her eyes. "Or perhaps you needed them to give you, in painting form, that which no decent woman would ever give you."

"Unless she were a freshly bought slave girl, of course, and inclined to... _please_ her master."

"Jaffar!"

He is leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest, leering so widely his crooked teeth flash in the lamplight. "Please, my lady, don't let me interrupt your reverie. It looks as if you were enjoying yourself."

She snaps the book shut, flushing all over; as she shifts upon her cushions, she can feel she is wet, wondering if he can smell her. And from the way his nostrils now flutter, she knows he can, oh--she casts her eyes down in shame. "It is a book commissioned by an infidel," she murmurs. "To so describe the sins of the flesh, as if they were Holy Writ--"

He laughs, laughs, a laughter that pools in her belly like honey. He pushes himself off the doorframe with an exaggerated roll of his hips, swaying with the languor of a dancing-girl as he takes a seat opposite her. "I must admit," he purrs, "I hadn't expected our first evening together to involve theological debate. Yet, never let it be said I am a man uncultured, or impious."

"Only an infidel would make a slave of a royal princess," she murmurs, snatching her hands away when he tries to clasp them over the table. 

He tilts his head, that infernal smile still curling his lips, lips red and wet as if he'd been drinking wine; yet as he speaks, his breath smells of basil, the herb of lovers. "Did you not cast your honour to the winds the very moment you ran away from your father, my child? Tell me, was that the act of a royal princess?" His eyes flash, now. "Or a besotted strumpet?" 

"Don't you _dare_ speak to me like that, you dog!"

She raises her hand to slap him, yet he snatches her wrist in his hand. " _'Husband,'_ I think you'll find." 

"Never!" she cries, reclaiming her hand and rubbing her wrist. Yet he has not hurt her, no; what's worse is the heat his touch has left on her skin--oh, but this is madness. "Whatever spell you have cast upon me, Barmakid, I order you to break it."

He sits back and sighs. "And pray, my dear, what would you do, then? If I let you go now, let you walk out of that door? _Think_ for but a moment, my lady. What would you be walking into? Do you honestly believe your father would still think you a virgin, still think you honourable, welcome you back home with open arms? That a sultan should subject himself to such shame?" he laughs, cruelly. "Even if I didn't desire you, I would _have_ to marry you, now, if only to salvage what was left of your reputation."

"Don't make it sound like an act of charity," she mumbles, choking on the fear now coiling in her guts. Jaffar is right, and she knows this: the moment she had escaped the harem, her virtue had been forfeit. Yet if people learned the truth--that she had been rescued from the slavers a virgin, by her own betrothed--she might still be able to show her face at court. 

But even then, people would whisper. Jaffar's 'strumpet' had been kind in comparison to the names they must be using of her right now, the old harpies of the harem gossiping about her over their tea and cakes. 

"You're thinking of your precious Ahmad," he sneers.

"As a matter of fact, I am not."

"I have known him since he was but a babe. Trust me; he would not know how to make a woman happy. He has three hundred and sixty-five women in his harem, and has not loved a single one. The boy doesn't even know what love means!"

"And you do, I suppose?" she snaps, glancing at the book. "I have seen what love means to you. Potions, straps, contorted postures, sins no honourable woman would ever commit--" and now the tears come, escaping her eyes, falling upon the book's front flap. "I might as well have run away and become a whore, because is that not what you want from me? To make me into one of your _toys?_ "

"My lady Yassamin," he groans, rolling his eyes. "What sort of a brute do you take me for?" His eyes are now heavy with what seems like true anguish. "If I wanted to take you by force, to debauch you, to make you into my puppet, don't you think I would have done so already?" Tenderly, he lifts his hand to her veil, barely touching it. "What must I do to convince you that my intentions are honourable? That I wish you no harm?" he whispers, and the touch of his fingertips upon her hair is so light she can barely feel it, yet the waves of heat it sends through her scalp, through her shoulders, making her heartbeat quicken--

"Break this spell," she chokes, unable to look at him. "Whatever it is that you are doing to me, right now. I cannot think, I--"

"But there is no spell, my dear child," he says, his laughter a little brittle. 

"I refuse to believe it."

Yet now he smirks, genuinely so surprised, so impressed that it is the most terrifying thing she has ever seen: even before he opens his mouth, she knows what he is going to say.

"My sweet, sweet Yassamin," he laughs softly, shaking his head. "Upon my soul, there is no spell. Although they do say _love_ can make one feel as if one were enspelled."

"I do _not_ love you!"

He but smirks and smirks. "Lust, then. Its power can be quite formidable, too."

"Stop it!" she gets to her feet and gathers her veil about her face. "The game is over. Let me return to my father. I know he will believe me."

Jaffar gets up lazily, dancing a few steps backwards so that he blocks her path to the door. "And what then? Do you think he would let you marry Ahmad, the beggar?" he grins wickedly. "Because, my lady, do not for a moment think I am going to give up the throne. Your fool of a prince was unfit to rule, and God put a better man in his place. Your sweet Ahmad is where he belongs, now." With a mocking tilt of his head, he leans closer. "Would you truly leave behind your palace, your two hundred chambermaids so that you might go live with him in the gutter, subsisting on thievery and alms?"

She lifts her chin. "He would rise up to slay you, as good always rises up to slay evil."

"But you do not want me slain, Yassamin of Basra," he says warmly, enveloping her with his shadow and oh, oh, even his shadow is a caress of fragrant heat. "Now do you?" his eyes glimmer with mirth. "I propose a bargain, my lady, if you would but care to listen."

"Another trap, I suppose," she says, casting down her eyes, and from her toes, his shadow creeps up her legs, her thighs, nestling between them: with his very presence, he is feeling for those stirrings of lust she had felt earlier.

"There is no trap," he says, even as he forces her back against the wall, frames her head with his hands, leaning in so close his eyes are crossed. "I shall let you choose, all right. But only after you have spent one night with me, Yassamin. But one night."

Her heart gallops in her chest; her knees quake, and the worst thing of all is the curl of heat she now feels in her cunny as his body heat merges with hers. He does not touch her, yet she yearns for it, every hair on her body standing on end as if reaching out towards him. 

"No," she moans, the futile cry of the gazelle tripped by the cheetah.

"Listen. I will not take your virginity, if that's what you're afraid of. This, I swear upon my soul--there is more to my love for you than an old man's desire to deflower a maiden. This is what I mean to prove to you, my child; to show you love as I see it, so that you might gain a complete understanding of what it is that I am offering you. For Love is a science among others, and the scientist must gain adequate knowledge of the facts before she makes her conclusions, must she not?" he smiles. "And should you decide you do not wish to remain with me, I shall return you to your father and vouch for your purity myself--and if that's not enough, let them call in a midwife to prove it! I shall tell your father it was my men who stole you away--because I was so besotted with you I could not wait until the wedding to have you in my arms, but that your innocence and your piety made me regret my actions. Thus, I shall return you to the harem as intact as you ever were, shall even wipe my name from the marriage contract should you so wish."

"Father made me sign it before I even knew who my husband was to be," Yassamin murmurs, her eyes now fixed upon the small triangle of skin peeking from the collar of Jaffar's shirt. Warm, brown skin; it, too, fragrant as if he were _made_ of perfume, inviting her kiss, oh--

He lifts her chin with his fingertips. "Well?"

What choice does she have? It's not as if she could spend the night in the street. She has already run away once, nearly died of hunger and thirst in the desert. It's a miracle the slavers had found her, for others would not have recognised the value of her virtue, would have but gorged themselves on her flesh. If she walks out now, a fate far worse than Jaffar's embrace awaits her outside: all men are beasts, this she knows. But at least this beast now standing before her has studied the art of love, and might be kinder to her, gentler than--oh, she is too terrified to even think of the alternatives. This is but a choice between two wolves, and as loath as she is to admit it, she would rather choose the one in gentleman's clothing.

"I accept," she sighs. "But do not for a moment think that I believe you honourable, Barmakid," she says, and now her eyes fill with tears: she doesn't want kindness, now. Rather, she wishes he would just ravish her and be done with it, because she is about to burst, from heartbreak, this desire she does not want to feel, her shame, oh, everything--

And it is then that he embraces her, his hands tender in her hair, and she is weeping into his shirt. "I don't want this," she lies, whispers between her tears, even as she trembles in his arms, even as she aches at the way his hands now clasp her back in the gentlest of caresses. "I hate you," she sobs, "I hate you," as he holds her tight against the warmth of his chest, so firm and so perfect that finally, she is unable to even weep.

He pulls back and he is smiling, his own eyes wet, now, but seemingly from mirth. "And do not for a moment think that I believe a word of it, Yassamin of Basra."

She refuses to look at him. "Will you promise to let me go tomorrow morning?"

"Should you desire it, yes," he says, "although I doubt you will want me to."

And that is the worst thing of all: he needn't say it, but the promise in his eyes terrifies her, encompassing as it does all the sensual pleasures she has seen in his book and more. She knows he could have his way with her and later, make her appear a virgin through his magic; there is no doubt about it. And yet, to be offered this, this chance to indulge without nobody ever having to know? Oh, she cannot lie: it arouses her beyond measure.

And what if she _should_ enjoy his embrace? What if she should never want to go back? What if she should break Ahmad's heart? Oh, there is no way out of this--whichever man she chooses, she is a deceitful whore. Again, she casts her eyes down in shame, thinking of Jaffar's promise, of his offer of at least disguising that whoredom, disguising the stupid, suicidally stupid streak of love-madness within her that had brought her here in the first place.

"I am a bad woman," she sighs.

"A most perfect companion for an infidel dog, then," Jaffar chuckles. "But, come," he says, kissing her hand. "Supper awaits."

***

It is in one of the harem bedchambers that they are served: this does not help ease her nervousness. Despite the presence of slaves--minstrel-girls making music behind a curtain, young maids piling one dish after another in front of them--she squirms upon her cushions. She makes a point of avoiding Jaffar's gaze, taking in her surroundings instead: Armenian cushions, Basran silks, Tabriz rugs, all in the sorts of colours and patterns she remembers last seeing at her grandmother's house.

"Do you like it?" Jaffar grins over his shoulder as he finishes sifting them a cup of wine. "This is the grand bedchamber of the Barmakid matriarchs. It is a little old-fashioned, I admit; no woman has occupied it since my mother died." He drops a ball of sugared camphor into the wine and stirs it with a stick of cinnamon, then hands the cup to Yassamin. "It has been like this for the past few years, but waiting for a new mistress to occupy it."

Yassamin lifts the cup to her lips, refusing to look at him. "And am I to believe the most powerful man in Persia has remained a bachelor until now?"

"Long enough," he says breezily and sprawls onto his side opposite her. "Magic can be the most demanding of mistresses."

She does not believe this is the whole truth for a moment, for a shadow flits across his face as she passes the wine cup back to him. 

"What made you change your mind?" she asks, far more coquettishly than she means to. Oh, there is a part of her that's impossible; a selfish, spoiled girl fishing for compliments. Quickly, she plucks a biscuit from the tray and starts picking on it, turning her voice more acrid, sharp. "What would you do with a wife if, as you yourself implied, only slave girls would agree to sate your perversions?"

He but chuckles and leans his head on his hand. "Perhaps that's it;" he purrs, rocking his hips a little. "Perhaps God himself has a perverse streak, having made me fall in love with a royal princess with such _impeccable_ manners."

"Again, you speak of love, and you do not even know me," she mumbles. 

"Yet, isn't that how all the great love stories start?" he sighs, a mockery of the besotted, dreaming youth. "The hero catches a glimpse of a distant princess, swears to do anything in his power to have her--"

"--and they both end up dead before they can have each other, only resting side by side in the graveyard," she says and starts to wash her fingers with rosewater.

"Is that what you would wish for us, my lady?" he asks, his voice quiet, serious, now. "By now, you know me better than you do your Ahmad." He waves his hand dismissively. "Oh, don't look so surprised; I witnessed your little tryst in the garden. But tell me, my dearest, sweetest Yassamin--what _is_ it about me that frightens you so?"

She busies herself drying her hands--yet it's as if she's washed her hands with perfume, for now her hands are fragrant with roses and sandalwood, too, and no amount of wiping seems to remove the scent from them. "That you were in my garden in the first place," she murmurs. "That you should so break into my quarters, to so invade my privacy--" 

He bursts into incredulous, bitter laughter. "Exactly what your sweet prince did. Except that _I_ kept my distance; came to ask for your hand in the proper manner. What he did was _indecent._ "

Now, she finally looks up at him, her eyes flashing. "And did you think me indecent, too?" she snaps, even if in her heart she knows it to be true: no decent girl would have so kissed a man she had only just met, djinni or not. "Was that what stirred your desires, then? Made you think I was the sort of wanton trollop--"

"Go on," he laughs, leaning forwards as if in preparation for a story. "Tell me. Tell me about the Yassamin who awakened that day; the Yassamin who had been slowly ripening from _my gaze_ and my gaze alone, the Yassamin who had but waited for her chance to become that trollop." His eyes widen with lustful glee and he leans closer to her, so close she can now smell the wine on his breath. "The Yassamin whose little heart beat faster that day, whose little bosoms were heaving with delight, whose little cunny must have been _honeyed_ with want--"

With a scream of outrage, she throws the rosewater into his face. "You insolent beast!" 

But with a wild laugh, he is upon her, pinning her onto the cushions by the shoulders. "Ahmad thought he had found a chaste maiden, a pearl to be pierced," he grins, drops of rosewater glimmering upon his lashes. "But I _know you,_ Yassamin of Basra. I have known you all your life, have watched over you all your life, and now you would deny the desire I awakened in your heart in the first place?"

"Get your hands off me!" she shouts, heaves, but she doesn't want him to, oh no, so a profound unhappiness fills her as he lets go and sits back on his knees, regarding her.

"Go on, then, Yassamin. Deny me. Deny the delight you took in my caress, the caress you felt upon your skin the day you became a woman. You thought it the midday sun, but--"

"Stop it." She clutches her jacket closer around herself, covering her breasts. 

"But you _do_ remember that day, Yassamin. That day, and all the others," he says, quietly, calmly. "The caress of the sun and the water, that presence you thought your djinni."

And how could she forget? The grass as if fingers, the water of her pool like a kiss upon her sex, so that she'd had to slip her hand between her legs when she'd thought no one was watching, to release that ache that had made swimming impossible. And always, always that pair of invisible eyes upon her, eyes she could only see within her mind, their blue the giddying, vertignious zenith her soul had soared to as she had cried out in release--

He had taken her, then, taken her before she had even known his name. And she, the fool, had yielded to him, this wrinkled, thin ghoul of a man now kneeling beside her. And this is worse than any deflowering, for Jaffar to have taken not her body but her _soul_ \--the wine rises up in her throat; she thinks she's going to be sick.

"I hate you," she murmurs.

He but shakes his head. "To hate me would be to hate yourself; to deny me would be to deny yourself. Only a fool would do such a thing, and you know it." He smiles at her, a smile infuriatingly knowing, gentle. "Besides, it would never do for a queen to deny herself anything she truly desired in her heart," he murmurs and starts to undo his soaking turban. "A queen's desires are to be fulfilled forthwith, without question."

"I do not desire you, Barmakid," she says, shivering as Jaffar shakes his thinning, shoulder-length hair free. Of course he had to be graying and balding, too, she knew it; this should disgust her, the way it reminds her of his age, his experience. Yet his scent of ambergris is now stronger, brought out by the dizzying heaviness of the rosewater, but the most dizzying thing of all is his crooked smile. A smile that slices her lies into ribbons, makes her stutter as she repeats "I--I do not desire you."

And he wraps his arms around her and smiles, smiles. "Go on."

"I--" and now her entire body is trembling, he the summer's heat made flesh, his hands caressing her shoulders like the softest of waves, his very smile the glimmer of the afternoon sun.

"Leave us," Jaffar says to the slave girls, never taking his eyes off her.

"Please, Jaffar--" 

"Now, are you pretending to squirm just on principle? There's no one here, now, and you know I _do_ so relish Yassamin the trollop."

She slaps him, then. But oh, the way he laughs at that! His hair flies around his face like some black and silver halo; his eyes glow in mad delight.

"Do that again," he purrs, undulating against her.

"No," she shivers. For now, he is stirring against her thigh, a piece of flesh harder and heavier than the rest of him, and he disgusts her. "So much for your promises, then."

"But, my lady, I don't know what you are talking about," he says as he bends her onto the cushions, pretending to be gentle, yet lowering half of his body on top of hers so that his leg lies between hers, his arm across her chest. She cannot escape, now, and he must be able to feel her thundering heartbeat just as she can feel his erection. "What promise am I breaking, now?"

She nudges at his erection with her thigh, trying to wound it, and not at all because she yearns to feel it, yearns to have it move closer to where she is now aching with heat, with wetness. "This," she pants. "I knew you would go back on your word."

He chuckles and brushes her hair away from her face with his hands, undoing her veil. "Which is what you were hoping for, I expect."

"No."

"Yes," he drawls, nodding slowly. "Which is exactly why I am _not_ going to deflower you tonight, my child."

"What?!"

"It's as I said. There is more to the art of love than the prick in the cunny, my dearest."

She sighs at the mosaics in the ceiling. "Of course, a man nearing fifty would say that."

He bursts into laughter and nuzzles her cheek, the vibrations of that laughter now painful against the heat in her hips, all the blood that's rushed there, trapped, crying out for release. "Come, now," he chuckles. "Virgin you may be, but I'm sure even you can tell Time has not yet emasculated your Jaffar."

"You're not _my_ Jaffar," she spits. "You're not my anything."

He lies down on his side, then, his arm around her waist, infuriatingly calm, infuriatingly patient. "Pray, then, my lady; tell me. What would you want your Jaffar to be?" His fingertips play at the gap between her jacket and her sash, his touch maddeningly soft through the silk of her undershirt. "What manner of a husband have you dreamt of? Tell me, and I promise--"

"He would be young, for a start," she grins, not letting him finish. Oh, Jaffar may be good at this game, but she, too, can be infuriating when she wants to be. "Brown-eyed, with thick, curly hair, with arms strong enough to carry me should he need to rescue me from a burning house."

"Your Ahmad is too weak to carry even a kitten by himself, but nevermind," he laughs, refusing to take the bait. "What sort of a man would your husband be as a lover, then?" he continues, rubbing his erection lazily against her hip.

She does not know how or why, but now she is caressing his cheek--she tells herself it is merely to tease, delighting in the way his breathing quickens at her touch. "First of all, he would not keep me waiting. If I asked him to comfort me, his arms would be around me faster than I could say 'hold me.' And should I desire a kiss or a caress, he would gift me with one immediately."

He moistens his lips, tensing underneath her hand. "Is that so?"

"Bachelor you may be, but I am sure even you know better than to disappoint a woman in the play of love."

He hisses a little, now letting his hand tighten around her waist. "And tell me, which acts of love does my lady think she would enjoy? Which illustrations did her eyes take the most pleasure in; which ones stirred her curiosity the most?"

At that, Yassamin has to close her eyes. She knows the exact ones, but this is where her boldness ends and she becomes the helpless virgin once more; she cannot bear to look at his infernal smile any longer. "Do not tease, Barmakid. You speak of lovemaking only to deny me; stop being cruel."

"When did I say I was going to refuse you lovemaking?" he says, clasping her hand. "I will say it one more time: there are other means of making love besides the traditional method; you've seen as much in my books. There are so many ways in which a man can love a woman--"

"Then I wish you would," she snaps.

There, she has said it.

He sighs with utmost happiness and pulls her to lie down on top of himself. "Oh, Yassamin, Yassamin. If that is your wish, I would be glad to fulfill it."

And the way he now moves his hands to her buttocks makes her moan against his chest, makes her legs part so that her cunny drags over his erection; she nearly loses herself there and then. "Hurry, then, you infidel," she hisses, clutching his shirt over and over, ruining its silk with her fingernails. "All day you have kept me here and have not yet stolen one kiss--"

"My, my," he laughs, pulling up her undershirt and sliding his hands to her waist, warm over her bare skin. "You truly have been expecting a brute, I see. What's the matter, my dear? If my honourable intentions have disappointed you, I am sure I could remedy this--if that's what you want."

"Jaffar, I--" she mumbles into his shoulder.

"Look at me, Yassamin."

With a little groan, she lifts her head, shaking her hair from her face. She knows she must be flushed red all over, anything but dignified by now, the very trollop he had spoken of. He has completely, utterly possessed her; she cannot stop moving on top of him, her cunny now soaking through her drawers and he must feel it, he must. "Please, Jaffar. If you truly love me, stop teasing me."

"But you haven't yet answered my question, my dear." He tugs on the laces of her jacket, the open front of her shirt, enough to reveal the curves of her breasts. "Tell me, just once, honestly, truthfully: is it a ravishment that you want?" He takes her shirt and by it, he drags her closer, close enough to kiss. "Because I can give you that," he purrs through his gleaming, red lips, his pupils wide from desire. "Not a husband, then, if that's not what you want. None of these _obligations,_ these _rules,_ this talk of _honour._ Only the master," he whispers and nuzzles her nose with his, "enjoying his slave girl." 

She whimpers, her cunny clenching so violently it sends her entire body into movement, and bereft of words, she tries to kiss him instead. But it is at that that he sinks his fists into her hair--and oh, the way he tries to remain calm, but the way his hips jerk underneath her, the way his own voice now trembles! "Tell me," he hisses, snatching her head up by the hair, the pain making her twist in sweet agony, and she never knew love could feel like this, never knew she could want this--

"Yes," she pants, tears springing up in her eyes, her hands so tight upon his shirt she can feel the silk tearing. She hates him so much, wants him so much, and in her love-madness, she tears at his shirt deliberately, pulls at the fabric until she has ripped it in half, until she has bared his chest. So he _is_ human, then, human underneath his magics, his perfumes, his silks: yet she still hates him and sinks her claws into his flesh. "But don't think I'm going to make it easy for you, Barmakid," she says as she drags her fingernails down his chest, making him cry out underneath her. He may have called her a trollop, but she is _a royal princess_ \--

\--and he roars, rolling her onto her back. "We'll see about that," he snarls in her face, thrusting his hips lewdly between her legs. It horrifies her, yet the pressure of his flesh against hers feels so wonderful it makes her part her legs, clutch at his back, his buttocks so that he would finally take her, take her, take her. And she has to let those words out, let them burst from her lips with each one of his thrusts. 

"Take me, Jaffar, please. Take me."

At that, he howls--how long must he have dreamt of her saying that, his dream fulfilled! Again, he thrusts, moaning so deep from his throat she thinks he is going to undo himself that very moment. 

Yet, with a snarl, he pushes himself off her and kneels before her. "Get up."

And when she resists, his eyes narrow and the most horrible, awful of smiles spreads upon his face. Without a word, he drags her onto her feet and begins to tear at her clothes. She screams and she screams as she is thus defiled, shamed, but he ignores her cries as he dances around her, ripping her precious garments to pieces. Perhaps she had deserved this all along, she thinks as one by one, her silks flutter at her feet: for she is a bad woman, he now exposing her guilty flesh as he had exposed her wanton nature, leaving her defenseless, bare. 

And thus she stands in the centre of the room, naked, he still in his torn shirt and drawers, laughing at her. "Much better." And when she tries to cover her breasts, cover her sex with her hands, he but _purrs_ , nuzzling her face. "Exactly what I was hoping to see in the back room at the slave market," he croons, "until you so cruelly deprived me of the pleasure of inspecting you." He lifts her hair from her face and smiles. "But you will not pass out on me this time, will you, my sweet? Hmm?"

She is not so sure--she is so terrified she might faint any moment. "I--I--" but she cannot form words, sentences, not with the way he steps back and _licks_ her with his gaze. 

Yet it is then that he turns around and leaves her, leaves her baffled as he proceeds to rummage around in a large trunk at the foot of the bed.

"But a moment," he says over his shoulder. "I almost forgot this, you see." 

And as he lifts a slim, dark riding whip from the trunk, she cries out in terror and falls to her knees. "No! Please, Jaffar!"

"'Please, _master,_ ' I should think," he says breezily, twirling the whip in his fingers as he strolls towards her.

She curls up so that he can't stare at her front and clasps the toes of his slippers. "Master," she moans, with all the hatred and scorn she can muster. "Mercy."

He taps at her shoulder with the whip. "Did Halima not tell you I can be the kindest of men to those who but make an effort to please me?"

"Yes," she mumbles. 

"Well, then, my sweet Yassamin. It would please me greatly if you made the effort to stand up. Let me see you."

Her eyes blazing, her hair wild, she gets to her feet, now presenting her beauty to him in defiance, seeing as it's the only weapon she has left. "Yes, _master,_ " she hisses through her teeth, thrusting her breasts out boldly, insolently.

He tilts his head and smiles, acknowledging her with a nod. "It's a good thing I brought this," he murmurs as he begins to stalk around her, running the tip of the whip up her spine, making her shiver and lift onto her toes. "I get the feeling you are going to be _quite_ a handful."

When she doesn't speak, he but stands before her, regarding her. "Speak, my child. What are your skills?"

"Skills?"

He makes the whip whistle through the air. "You know what I mean, girl. Music, dance, storytelling?"

"I--I can sing," she stutters.

He raises his eyebrow skeptically. "A few notes, if you will."

She has always been proud of her voice, the one they call the pleasantest this side of the Arabian Sea, but as she attempts the opening of a love song, her voice quavers, breaks. When his hand twitches upon his whip, she clears her throat and tries again.

_"Like the nightingale, I dance around my Beloved, the cruel rose--"_

He swishes his whip dismissively and shakes his head. "Courtly love songs?" He tuts. "Perhaps those are popular in the harem, but they're hardly entertaining to a grown man. Do you know any drinking songs? Bawdy songs?"

She licks her lips feverishly. She has heard a few Abu Nuwas compositions, but has never dared recite them out loud: they're hardly suited to the ears, let alone mouths of proper women. But if it's bawdiness he wants, very well. In fact, there's one poem in particular that now springs to her mind--after all, it does suit the occasion.

 _"I was but a boy, seduced by a dirty old man,"_ she begins. Oh, but this is mad, absurd, and she tries in vain to hold back laughter as she recalls the dirty verses. _"Defenseless, I stood as he tore my clothes off me, thinking to molest me--"_

And now, Jaffar cannot help but laugh himself, his stern facade cracking a little as he sucks in his cheeks. So he does know this poem, oh, he does: it is a flash of recognition she now spies twinkling in his eyes. "Go on," he chuckles.

She has to pause to catch her breath, for she is laughing too much. "I am trying."

He taps her chin with his whip. "Out with it," he grins.

 _"Only when--"_ again, she clears her throat. _"Only the moment he tried to put his lips to my buttocks, I let out a fragrant fart in his face!"_

And now Jaffar is red in the face, his lips white from his biting of them, yet he taps at her chin still. "And the rest of it?"

She wipes tears of laughter from her eyes. _"I turned around and said to the dirty old man: if it's an arse you try to kiss, a taste of the arse is what you'll get!"_

And now, Jaffar bursts into hopeless, high laughter, staggering as he steps behind her and whips her buttocks, pretending to chastise her. Despite the sting, she cannot stop laughing, and neither can he, his strokes playful, so delicious that soon enough, she is shrieking in pleasure. He delivers a dozen light strokes until she collapses onto the floor on all fours, heaving, laughing still.

He lets the whip drop onto the floor and hugs her from behind, short of breath himself. "Enough, my little nightingale," he groans into her neck, the scratch of his moustache sending her into further convulsions of laughter. Even as he lifts her onto her knees and pulls her against himself, she is still cackling.

"Stop it!" he chuckles, cupping her breasts. "I haven't finished inspecting you."

"I am sorry, master," she laughs, but she is not sorry at all, cupping her hands over his. "Do you find these to your satisfaction?"

"Yes," he hisses, and that hiss slithers straight into her cunny, making her jerk in his arms. He squeezes her breasts, weighs them in his hands, squeezes her nipples a little until she is squirming. "And what else can you do with this little body of yours, hmm?"

"I can dance," she leers, now completely shameless, warm from their shared laughter, rubbing her buttocks against his erection.

"All women know how to dance on a prick," he scoffs and pauses to pick up his wine cup, sipping from it even as he holds her. "What makes you so special?" he asks, and before she can answer, he spills the remains of the wine upon her chest. She screams, but he catches her mouth in a kiss, sliding his hand to her belly, his fingertips just above her mound. "What makes you different from the rest, hmm?" he croons into her mouth, now rocking himself against her arse in turn.

She moans in his arms, cold and wet from the wine, her nipples hardened little peaks. "I have an advantage no other woman has, my lord," she pants, no longer afraid as he takes out his prick and slips it between her legs, rutting in her cleft. 

"Is that so, my child?" he murmurs onto her lips, sliding slickly against her.

With his very body he is challenging her, yet she keens into his kiss, _her first real kiss,_ squeezing him with her thighs. "Yes. For I hold my master's heart in my hand, do I not?"

"God, Yassamin--you do, you do--" he sobs, the head of his cock peeking out from between the lips of her cunny, gleaming wet from her arousal, he trembling as he rubs himself against her. It feels so wonderful between her thighs, warm, hard, long and fat and she needs it inside of herself, needs--

But as she tries to guide him inside herself, he snatches her wrists, trapping them behind her back. "No."

"Please, Jaffar, please," she pants, her hair plastered against her neck. "Please, take me. I no longer care. Please, please, let me have you--"

"I swore not to," he snarls, and she can hear the regret, the strain in his voice, a voice so high it catches in his throat. "Not until we are husband and wife."

She screams in her frustration, trying to force herself upon his cock once more and for a brief second, it dips into her cunny, pushes against the tightness at the entrance to her body--

And he flings her onto the floor, his cock bobbing, dripping with strings of her wetness as he gets to his feet. "No."

"You are a monster," she screams and bursts into tears, clawing at his thighs. "Give it to me, or I swear I will bite it off," she cries.

"Lie down on your back," he barks, swatting her hands away. "Do as you're told."

And full of hope, her chest still heaving from tears, she lies back and spreads her legs. Maybe now that he can see her, see how wet she is, how swollen, how flushed, he will have mercy upon her. "Please," she says, clasping her thighs from underneath and displaying herself. "Is this not proof enough that I do want you?"

He lies down between her legs and marvels at her cunny, framing it with his hands. The paleness and the pinkness of it, all of her desire now encompassed by his long, brown fingers, yet he keeps on looking at her, smiling and smiling. "Oh, but my dear, sweet Yassamin, this proof has just made me the happiest man in the world."

"I hate you," she murmurs, short of breath, bent double as she is.

"Yes, I can tell," he purrs, his lashes falling musk-black to his cheeks as he inhales her, nuzzles her vulva with his nose and his lips. "Would you let me kiss it?"

"You are a sick pervert."

"I think you knew that the moment you first saw me, my lady. Yet, you did not answer my question. Would you let me kiss it?"

 _A decent man like Ahmad never would,_ his eyes are saying, and in her heart of hearts, she knows this, her cunny pulsing, tightening, yearning for his touch. "Whatever pleases my master," she says, her arms now shaking from the effort of holding her legs up.

"An exemplary answer, my dear," he laughs, gifting her mound with a soft kiss. "It would please me very much indeed to taste you."

"Please, do," she says, for sinful or not, she knows she will die if he doesn't touch her cunny now, whether it's with his hands or his prick or his lips. Her flesh is so full of blood it swells as if to meet him, and the moment his tongue flicks into her slit, her head falls back on the rug and she howls into the ceiling. 

"Please, Jaffar, oh, God--"

But he does not answer her with words, only gentleness: he takes the weight of her legs upon his shoulders, cups her buttocks when her hips lift off the floor and she keeps on shouting, shouting, clawing at the carpet. She had never known of a pleasure like this, not until tonight, not until she had seen it in his book, had thought "clitoris-sucker" but an imaginative insult, but oh, oh--now she is sucked into his mouth and flowing down his chin, tossing helplessly as he sucks wave upon wave of pleasure out of her flesh, making her jerk against his mouth. 

"Jaffar," she screams but he doesn't stop, and he is torturing her with this pleasure, a pleasure so immense it's pain, trapped as she is, for she does not yet know how to orgasm this way. Like some perverse angel, he has lifted her to the heavens within moments and she keeps soaring, the waves of heat flashing higher and higher, yet she never reaches the zenith. "Please, please--"

And he lifts his slick and wet face from her, his eyes glazed, his voice hoarse, drunk. "Am I hurting you?"

She shakes her head, manic, her hair a mess around her head. "Don't tease. I am so close; please don't stop now."

He quirks his eyebrow and sucks upon a finger, then places that finger at her entrance. "Would this help?" And he is there, almost deflowering her but not quite, taking her slowly with his finger, pressing high inside of her. 

A man. Inside her body. Inside her cunny. He is inside her, _Jaffar_ is inside of her.

"God--!" she cries, clutches at his shoulders, his head, staring feverishly into his eyes as he leans down to suck on her once more. "If you stop now, I swear you will not see the morning, I swear--"

And he but _chuckles,_ chuckles loudly against her pubic bone as he sucks on her clitoris, sucks and she is lost, lost upon but that one finger, coming hopelessly, helplessly around it. Again, her hips lift off the floor and she screams, yet he keeps on taking her with an engineer's precision, never ceasing the thrusts of his finger, never ceasing his rhythmical curling of it against the front of her cunny, milking her release out of her with his voice and his touch. 

With one high, reedy scream, she throws herself onto her side, slipping off his mouth and his hands, collapsing onto the floor but a heap of shuddering flesh. "Stop, Jaffar, stop."

"Whoever heard of the slave girl ordering her master around in such a fashion?" he tuts, resting his weight on top of her, nestling his erection in her slit.

At that, her cunny twitches again, again. "I saw in your book a picture of a man enslaved by his mistress, kneeling at her feet," she says, wrapping her legs around him, anointing him with her arousal. "You asked me which pages most stirred my curiosity, and that certainly intrigued me," she purrs, kissing him lazily, now soft and happy from her orgasm. 

"And you think yourself a mistress already, my sweet _maiden?_ " he purrs back into her kiss, rocking his cock back and forth between the lips of her cunny.

She turns her face away and groans. "I refuse to beg for you any longer. You enjoy it too much."

"Mmm," he murmurs, licking wine from her breasts, his own arousal now so strong his ambergris radiates from his skin, transformed into a honeyed sweetness. As if he, too, had a sweet cunny, as if he were like the other illustrations she had seen in his book, of women who took each other in this manner, rubbing their genitals against the other's. "Then remain content in being a slave girl, my sweet. Speaking of which, do you know which quality I most value in a slave girl? Beyond even obedience, beyond even her desire to please me?"

She is tired of his games, but humours him nevertheless: she is sure he cannot hold back for much longer, so perhaps there is still some pleasure left in this for her, too. "I am sure you are _desperate_ to tell me, master," she mocks.

He but laughs and throws her onto her stomach, twisting her hands behind her back until she screams. "Insolent little wretch. I could still use the whip on you, you know."

She shrieks into the carpet. "Let me go!"

"But I thought you wanted me to _take_ you, my sweet," he croons and slowly, deliberately rests his weight on top of her, sliding his cock between her buttocks. "What's the matter? Surely you saw the chapter on the most valuable of slave girls? The ones who know how to pleasure men not only with their fronts but their behinds, too?"

Her heart stops, then breaks into a panicked gallop. "No," she moans weakly, but of course she remembers. The picture with three freshly sodomised girls bent over, their anuses gaping, a painted Jaffar leering over them with his prick erect, smeared with white. "No!" she shrieks once more, even if her cunny is pulsing at the idea of being so opened, her buttocks clenching around his cock.

"Yes," he drawls, stretching out the word, pressing the tip of his cock into her anus, chuckling as she clenches around him in terror. "You are a poor liar, my little Yassamin. Besides, I am not breaking my promise, am I? If I take you here, no one will know, no one. Think of it, my child. You will get what you wanted, yet remain intact, and experience pleasure even greater than that of ordinary coitus, or so I'm told."

She closes her eyes and pants, stiffening against the pain as he pushes in deeper. "You lie."

"I do not. My girls tell me that once the initial discomfort passes, the pleasure is tenfold in comparison to that of the prick in the cunny. Some even tell me the pain of deflowerment is far greater, and I am inclined to believe them--I have never seen a woman bleed from being taken this way, for a start."

"Yet, you are hurting me!"

He pauses, then, lets go of her hands. He kisses her shoulder, his voice softer, now. "I would not hurt you, my love. It is only when one resists that one feels pain. Would you let me show you?"

She clenches her hands into fists and breathes, then looks at him over her shoulder. His eyes are sincere, now, if still wide from lust; his body stiff, too, from the strain of holding back. Even now, he is denying himself, yet is it because he truly feels concern for her, or because of some perversion of his? She shivers, Yassamin the trollop gone, the frightened girl within her emerging once more. All of the things they've done so far have been but play, but lovers' games, but now that she is truly expected to yield, to truly take that _thing_ inside of her body, she is terrified. 

"You frighten me, Barmakid," she whispers.

His hands are warm upon her back, her sides; his voice warm, too, as he nuzzles her temple. "Then, my sweet, let me cure you of that fright." He wraps one arm around her and tilts her head, kissing her slowly on the mouth, still rocking against her. "For is it not love that puts all fear to flight, turns one's heart into that of a lion?"

She half-sobs into his kiss, so tired of this game, so tired of being frightened, so tired of being denied. "And you would make a lioness of me, Barmakid?" She sinks her hand into his hair, past caring about the pain, past caring about anything except having him inside of her, him finishing this, taking her once and for all. So that she will no longer be Yassamin the runaway but a new woman entirely, a woman who has known love, a woman no longer hollowed by fright but complete, that empty space in her filled with what he insists is love. Oh, but she wants to believe it's love, for what would she have without it, Ahmad now seeming but a phantasm compared to this man caressing her with such tenderness this very moment? 

"If you truly love me, Jaffar, then prove it."

He sighs into her kiss, hugging her tight against himself, more besotted youth than terrible ravisher. "I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to hear those words from your lips. But a moment, my sweet."

And he leaves her, but briefly, yet even then she feels cold, lonely without the weight of his body upon her. She turns around and he returns with a small ivory jar, undressing himself, kneeling between her legs. And as he opens the jar, she is again overwhelmed by ambergris, honey, musk, warmed by the caress of his shadow: and how beautiful he looks, now, much younger, his hair fallen to his cheeks, grinning mischievously as he begins to stroke the ointment onto his cock. 

"Do you like what you see, my lady?"

And her heart skips a beat, stumbles: she bites her lip and squirms, pressing her thighs together. "Yes," a new Yassamin says, a Yassamin that but a day ago would have rather died than married this man, yet now it is no other man she wants, so enspelled she is by him. His body no longer frightens her, and she realises the artists did not exaggerate: his limbs truly are extraordinarily long and sinewed, filled with a feline grace. And the way he smiles, tilts his head, his lashes long and lazy over that heavenly blue of his eyes-- _zenith-blue, the zenith of her pleasure_ \--oh, but she wants him to take her there again, again. 

"Yes, Jaffar. You please my eyes very much," she says, her heart skipping once more in delight.

"Then it's about time I pleasured the rest of you, too," he says and kisses her knees as he parts them. "Lie down on your belly, as you were before. It will be easier that way."

At that, she hesitates. "I would see your face."

"Very well, but it might hurt more," he says, kissing her knee as he lifts her legs onto his shoulders.

"I no longer care," she says and wraps her arms around him, taking his mouth with a kiss.

"Yes, I can tell it's your first time," he laughs a little nervously, then begins to press inside her arse. "Stroke yourself," he says with another kiss, "pleasure yourself."

"Jaffar--" and despite her arousal, it is as if he pushes against a solid wall as he tries to enter her. He dips easily into her opening, but immediately inside it, the pain is blunt, hard, stiffening her entire body. 

"Breathe, my love," he murmurs, pressing his forehead against hers. "Push out, as if you were passing a stool."

"That's _disgusting,_ " she groans.

He laughs. "And it works. Halima cleaned you, didn't she? You won't make a mess." Gently, he kisses her cheeks. "Now. Focus on the muscles. They are arranged in two rings--the outer and the inner, the latter of which is the tightest, the one that requires the most persuasion."

She groans again. "Now you are speaking as if this were a medical examination!"

"Oh, I am _so_ sorry," he leers. "Is it dirty talk you want, then, hmm?" he says and kisses her nose. "Go on, then, my little trollop," he drawls, "stroke that pink little cunny of yours, go on."

"Oh--" and as he rolls his hips, she can feel the muscles give, and she fears he might be tearing something, the stretch is so intense. But as he draws back and pushes in once again, one stroke after another, the pain transmutes into heat, an electric pleasure in her guts, lashing straight through her cunny. She doesn't know if she is going to come or if she is going to die; all of her is turned inside out, her pleasure drawn out of her body and spread out all over her skin, her every hair standing on end. But she wants more, needs it, will most definitely die if she can't have it. 

"Oh, please, Jaffar, please--"

"It's working," he laughs, then deliberately turns his voice into a dirty croon once more. "Now, would you like some more? Hmm? Do you like this big fat prick? Like the way I _fuck_ your little arse?"

"Jaffar!" she shouts, now, her hand flying on her cunny, and she has never been this swollen, this wet in her life, dripping, flowing down between her buttocks. She stares between her legs and screams, screams more as she sees how she is wetting him, how he slides deeper within her with each thrust, making her choke at each impact of his cock inside her body. Each stroke is a little earthquake, so that she can barely keep stroking herself, because now she is losing control of her limbs, shaking so much, white and blue and shining. 

"Please!" she cries through chattering teeth.

"I'm here," Jaffar moans and lets go, now thrusting into her in his own rhythm, with the full force of his body. A man, a man taking her, claiming her, his body heavy, rich, slippery upon her. And she never knew how good this could feel, the weight of another person so unlike all those times she had masturbated. Her own touch had been light in comparison to the way he is now crushing her body with his, crushing her into but the golden wine of pleasure; underneath him, she liquifies and spills over. Shrieking, she grinds her knuckles against her clitoris, howls as his hips beat against her hand, as all of her convulses around him in a sudden, sharp release, a jagged, white stab after another as he pushes through her spasming muscles. 

Yet he keeps going, howling into her face as he sees her coming, his hips slapping wet against her buttocks. "Yassamin, Yassamin," he cries, his voice high, his breath but snorts, huffs.

But the pain is too much, now, making her stiffen underneath him as he hits something hard, cold, something he cannot get past, each of his thrusts now an agonising blow. "You're hurting me," she cries, pushes at his chest with her hands. "Please, Jaffar. Stop."

"Turn around," he murmurs, kissing her and kissing her, shivering, so close to release himself. "It's the curve of your guts, the back of your womb, isn't it?" he mumbles, clasping her face with his hands and kissing her once more. "That's the pain I wanted to spare you from. Turn around, turn around and I will make it good again, I promise, Yassamin. I promise," he babbles, his fingers trembling upon her cheeks. 

"I wouldn't know," she sobs, yet she lets him turn her onto her stomach. But now she is rigid underneath him, frightened as he begins to push inside of her once more. "Please, be gentle."

"Come here," he murmurs and lifts her so that he can kiss her as he moves into her, penetrating her with shorter strokes, now. "Is that better?"

"Yes," she moans, for he was right: now he is deeper, the head of his cock hitting a spot in her guts that strikes sparks within her body, sparks. "That's--that's--"

"The pleasure of the slave girls, my lady," he chuckles into her ear. "Now, do you believe me?"

"Oh, God!"

"That's my girl," he pants and drags his hand to her clitoris, rubbing it with circular motions, the pulses of his caress meeting the sparks in her hips and she sobs in shame, exhaustion, utter helplessness. Two weapons she is conquered with, now, his hand and his prick, cutting through her inside and out, and she is too overwhelmed to even weep. Only dimly, now, can she feel his movements, for they have blended into but one sea of pleasure; only dimly, can she hear his words in her ear. 

"Take me with you," he murmurs, choking a little, his hips losing their rhythm, now. "Take my love with your love, please; please let me feel you come, Yassamin. Please."

 _Jaffar,_ she cries, but it is only within her body, for she can no longer speak: at a particularly hard, desperate thrust of his she is undone, unravelled, rising and falling all around him in white crests of heat. She is so beyond herself it is as if she is watching them from above, the very picture of some mystical revelation of the alchemist: an eight-pointed star of white and bronze limbs, a beast atop a woman, rutting flat upon the floor. The man so thin the woman's flesh spills out from underneath him, jiggling, rippling from the violent, sharp thrusts of his hips. And that woman, that Yassamin now screams in abandon as she takes this beast within her flesh, delights in his cries as he finds his release in her, pouring himself within her body. 

"I love you," he keens, hugging her so tight she is drawn back into her body, her ribs creaking within his embrace but she never wants to leave, never, ever. 

"And I love you, my sweet Jaffar," she murmurs, beside herself with joy.

And the noise he makes at that, the noise! It is a high cry, turning into a chuckle, then an open-mouthed laugh and he pulls her to lie down with himself, spooning her, still nestled within her. "That's the first time you've told me you love me," he murmurs, stroking her belly, making her shiver in sweet aftershocks. 

"I lied," she groans and covers her face with her arm. "You are a pervert; a dirty, miserable dog."

"Careful," he purrs, thrusting a little with his hips. "Soon you'll have me ready for another bout."

But now she is too sensitive, his thrust a stab into her guts and she gasps in true pain. "Mercy."

"Very well." He slips out of her and kisses her neck. "It's time we bathed. Come."


	2. Chapter 2

Yassamin is still shy when Jaffar washes her in the bathroom: the way he now touches her, lazy, unhurried, exploring each part of her body feels somehow more intimate than sodomy itself. A master taking his slave girl is one thing, she thinks, but as he takes her mouth under the warm water and holds her against his body, she becomes more than that, far more: for is this not what lovers do? 

"What are you thinking of, my sweet?" he says as he pulls back from the kiss, smiling.

"Foolish things," she says, casting down her eyes.

"No; do tell." He kisses her forehead. "I would not want my wife to keep secrets from me."

"So you do love me, then," she murmurs, ashamed of herself.

"And now, you realise it?" he laughs playfully, kissing her once more. But as she hesitates, he pulls back. "Yet you are still afraid."

"Of course I am," she mumbles still. "Now I wish the Lord _had_ made me into a slave girl; I am inclined to think hers is a lot easier than that of a queen."

He soaps the sponge once more and brings it between her buttocks, washing her there, too. "I am glad it's only the position you are afraid of, and not me," he says. "Know that in private, you will always be Yassamin to me first and foremost." He presses at her anus with the sponge and grins. "And should you want me to treat you like a slave girl each night, I can arrange that."

"Don't jest." Now, she finally looks into his eyes. "Jaffar, I am terrified." 

He stops washing her, sighing deep from his chest, a sigh so terrible, so resigned it breaks her heart. Now it's he who cannot look at her. "And is this fear greater than anything you might have... felt for me? Is that what you are saying?"

"Forgive me. This is foolish, I--" for is this not what she has been prepared for all her life? Becoming the wife of an emir at least, the mistress of a vast court? But to be Calipha, the queen of all believers, the empress of the entirety of al-Islam--oh, how could any woman ever be ready for such a task? The water feels cold, now, the world outside threatening, Jaffar the only warm thing in this chaos she has been plunged into. 

"I see." Jaffar throws the sponge back into the washbowl, then stares at it for a long while. "It's funny," he says, his laughter dry and dead in his throat. "The last time I was in this bathroom I was but a babe, and I was the one having my arse washed." He swallows, still not looking at her. "You awaken such happy memories in me, Yassamin, such gladness, such joy," he says, now angry, bitter. "Such _tenderness,_ " he spits, like pushing a scorpion off himself. "Forgive me. It is I who have been the fool, to give in to such sentiments." 

_To have wasted them on you,_ that's what he is saying, tense, his chest tight from pain.

"Jaffar, please. It's only that--"

"It's fair enough." He wraps a towel around himself and starts to dry his hair with another. "I shall let you go tomorrow morning, as we had agreed," and even from underneath the towel, she can hear he is swallowing back tears. "Forgive this old man and what he did to you in the heat of his passion. It has blinded greater men than I."

"Jaffar, please." She wants to reach out to him, but she's so cold, so cold, so she can only clutch her arms around herself. And as he looks at her, she wonders what he sees: quite possibly the very picture of the young girl debauched, violated. Yes, it's pity she now sees in his eyes, and she doesn't want that. She wants to--

"Jaffar," she says, closing the distance between them. "Please forgive me."

He sighs and wraps his towel around them both, gathering her against himself. "I meant what I said about not wanting you to keep anything from me. What is it that you truly feel? Tell me."

"I did not lie about being scared," she murmurs against his chest.

"If it helps, there are days I am frightened, too, waking up in the morning and realising who I am," he says, stroking her back. "Sometimes I would rather wake up peasant than king. So you see, we are not that different. But perhaps that's it, perhaps--" he hesitates.

"Perhaps what?" She looks up at him, and now it's he who looks embarrassed. "Tell me, Jaffar."

"It's sentiment again, I'm afraid," he winces.

She hugs him tighter against herself, now refusing to take her eyes off his. "Would it help if I told you I--"

"Yes?" there is a little spark in his eyes, now.

"That--" she shakes her head, then meets his eyes once more. "That even if you are an infidel and a dog and a pig and a fool besides, I love you?"

Now, he practically purrs, the laughter in his chest vast, warm. "Say that again."

"I love you," she says, "and you had better be _extremely_ sentimental with me, lest I change my mind."

He throws back his head, his laughter echoing off the tiles. He rocks her in his arms and groans happily. "I only meant to say that perhaps we can help put each other's fears aside. That's what married couples do, don't they? Even the peasant, with the sun burning his back as he toils in the fields, takes comfort in the knowledge that at the end of the day, his wife will welcome him home with open arms."

"Or nag at him incessantly," Yassamin says and wriggles in his embrace.

"Some optimist you are," he groans, throws away the towel and smacks her arse, smacks it until she is shrieking, squirming. "This is what you'll get each time you dare nag at me," he laughs, pants, turning her to face the wall and delivering a few more smacks for good measure. "That, I promise!"

"Then I shall nag at you every night!" she squeals, so happy she is lightheaded. "Do that again."

He stops, short of breath. "Later. I am an old man and I need rest to keep up with a feisty little thing like you," he says and slaps her buttocks one last time. "Now, to bed."

But his smacks have awakened her cunny again, so she rocks her hips coquettishly. "Is that an order?"

He raises his eyebrows, mock-shocked. "Yes, that's an order! And I mean to sleep," he says as he wraps a fresh towel around her and leads her to the dressing room. "Trollop."

"Dog," she laughs, leaning her head on his shoulder.

*** 

She cannot sleep, so she lies beside him and watches him. Yet she is not sure if she is, in fact, dreaming: all that surrounds her feels unreal. Here she lies, in an ensorcelled palace, upon sheets suffused with strange perfumes, in the strange light of the red-green glass lantern hanging beside the bed. She has never seen lanterns of this type except in mosques, had heard they had been installed by some Barmakid prince or another. Thus, the colourful light immediately makes her think of worlds beyond this one, of God, of destiny. All those times she had prostrated in prayer and begged for God to give her a good husband, a gentle husband, a loving husband, knowing she would herself have little choice in the matter. 

And now this light, this holy light paints its flickering colours and shadows upon the face of a man who would be that for her: husband, lover, friend. Yet all of this has happened so fast she still doesn't know what to think. She knows he would let her go in the morning should she ask him to do so, yet she knows that if she left now, she would break his heart.

 _To say nothing of your own, Yassamin, you foolish child._ Oh, but why does she even think of the possibility of leaving, now? Is this some virginal panic still lingering within her? She could make excuses about the duties of a queen forever, yet is that not what a princess is: but a queen-in-training? Oh, she is a fool.

Thus, she lies here and watches Jaffar, son of Yahya of the Barmakids, the man who would be her king. He must have been beautiful as a young man, and now that she is no longer so frightened of him, she can see that beauty still lingering upon his face, in his harmonious and even features: the sharp arches of his cheeks, the bold, straight line of his nose, the way his eyes flicker to and fro underneath their lids. A surge of emotion takes her by the throat and now, in this twilight, upon his face, she can see the features of their children yet unborn. And his lips, those lips whose curve she had thought so cruel, curling up in a joyous smile as Jaffar the father lifts up their newborn and whispers the call to prayer in the child's ear--

And now, she is weeping, has to hold her hand to her mouth so as not to wake him with her sobs. How could she _not_ love him? How could she ever--

"Yassamin," those lips now murmur, and there, the exact smile she had been thinking of.

"Jaffar?" she whispers, but he is fast asleep. 

Wiping tears from her eyes, she moves closer to him. Oh, she loves him, and she has to tell him, has to tell him she will marry him, and damn all other men to Hell. But she does not want to wake him up, so she but caresses his cheek gently, lets her fingers glide down the steep valley of his cheek. "I love you," she whispers, as quietly as she can. "I love you, Jaffar, son of Yahya."

And he smiles, smiles--yet the way his eyes remain closed, flickering rapidly tells her he is still dreaming. How many times must he have dreamt of this, of her beside him--why should she _not_ wake him up, now, to make those dreams finally come true?

Thus, she bites her lip and carefully, carefully lifts the bedcovers, lifts his nightshirt. And it's just as she had hoped: his cock is half-hard, nestled between his belly and the bed. _If you know how to love a man's prick, how to caress it, how to dance upon it, his love for you will never die,_ the older women of the harem had always told her. _It's thanks to my hands I have remained your father's favourite all these years,_ her own mother had told her--she remembers how repulsed she had been as her mother had taken a cucumber and demonstrated the exact movements she needed to learn in order to render a man senseless from desire. Yet she still remembers how her mother had clasped the cucumber, how she had used her fingertips upon it. _Soft here, tight here, and a little flutter here, Yassamin. Now, you try it._

And she had imagined it, had imagined her first night with a man, all the ways in which she could ensure she would forever hold her bridegroom's heart. So she takes Jaffar's cock into her hand--he makes a little noise through his lips, but doesn't seem to have awakened yet--and she lifts it gently, moving lower upon the bed to better manipulate him. His hips are so wide they cast deep shadows, so she studies him not by sight but by touch: as he grows in her hand and hardens, she clasps him with both hands to cover his entire length. How she could ever have taken this inside of her body, she has no idea, but she wants it inside of herself again, again: her cunny tightens between her legs, growing hotter and wetter just as he grows heavier, longer in her hands.

And still, he breathes shallowly; still, his fingers twitch in his sleep. Perhaps now, she can have that which he had denied her, she thinks, laughing incredulously to herself: to think that she now means to become the ravisher herself! Yet her cunny has needed this all night, has been aching to be filled, whether it should involve pain or not. And now that she knows she will not leave him come morning, what's the harm in it? 

Thus, this love-madness moves her limbs, moves this new Yassamin who now pushes Jaffar onto his back and sits astride him, guiding his prick to her cunny. She must have it, she must--but as she lowers her weight upon it a little the pain is _awful,_ like a knife at her opening. Despite herself, she cries out in her agony, slouching atop him.

"Yassamin?" and now Jaffar is awake, blinking, trying to lift his hand to her face, fatigued from sleep, still. His hand falls onto the bed and he stares at her, then closes his eyes in realisation, groaning deep from his belly. "Oh, Yassamin. You shouldn't," he murmurs, "shouldn't," as she again tries and fails to take him inside of herself.

"Please, Jaffar," she sobs, tears of frustration and shame falling out of her eyes, wetting his nightshirt. "Please."

"Yassamin, my love, my love," and now he finally manages to lift his hand, enough to caress her cheek. "You know there's no going back after this," he whispers. 

"I know," she says, wiping her nose, forcing herself deeper despite the pain, half to punish herself for her lustful greed. "I know," she hiccoughs in her throat.

"Look at me," he begs, pleads. "Yassamin, look at me. I can help you, but I must hear you say it. Will you marry me?"

"Yes!" she cries, mad, laughing and crying at the same time. 

At that, he smiles, the lantern light glittering through his irises. "Say it again."

"I will marry you," she says, shaking her head.

"There we are," he purrs, his smile a balm to her wounded cunny. "Not so difficult, was it?" He wets his thumb in his mouth and brings it to her clitoris, rubbing softly. "One more time, my love."

And at his caress, such a wonderful warmth spreads into her hips, her cunny tightening and then relaxing around his cock, forcing her to move a little upon him, and oh, he slides deeper, deeper. She is so overwhelmed by the sensation, by the pleasure, the pain that she can barely speak. "I--Jaffar--"

"Go on," he grins, now rocking his hips to meet hers. "Say it."

She groans and presses her forehead against his. "I will marry you," she gasps, "you _bastard._ "

And his laughter, his laughter! Now fully awake, he rolls her onto her back and kisses her, laughing into her mouth as he pulls off their shirts, rutting between her legs. "Go on, then, my strumpet. Have me, ravish me, just like you wanted to. I am but your slave."

She has to bite her lip to stop laughing, her heart so light from joy. "Pleasure me, then, slave."

"If you pleasure yourself, too," he says as he lifts her legs onto his shoulders once more. "I will try to make the pain brief."

And as she slides her hand down to caress herself, she barely knows her cunny: she is so swollen, so hot, so wet it's unbearable, even worse than the pain as he starts to thrust inside. "Please, don't stop--"

"Shh, shh," he says. "Let your hips fall slack; breathe. Just like that, my love, breathe."

And she sobs against her teeth through her pain, barely able to stroke herself, trying bravely to stop those sobs with deep, determined breaths. Steadily, gently he keeps moving into her, in and out of her, and he is past the pain, now, and she can smell the iron of blood. A blood sacrifice to love itself, she thinks, not such a huge sacrifice, not such a huge sacrifice at all, she laughs deliriously: as the pain gives way to pleasure, her love-madness returns and her sobs turn into moans.

"Jaffar, please--"

He pauses, kissing her cheeks. "Am I hurting you?" 

"No," she laughs, lifting her head to kiss his lips, "Not so much any more."

"I am glad to hear that," he says and rolls his hips a little.

"Oh, God!"

"Shall I do that again?"

Her eyes fly wide and she pats at his back, claws at it. "Please!"

"Very well, then, mistress," he chuckles and repeats the movement, rolling into her, undulating into her, and she becomes but tremors from the sudden, shocking pleasure of it.

"Please, don't stop," she groans, now digging her nails into his back, for this penetration is so unlike the way he had taken her before. It's not nearly as overwhelming, not as blinding, yet it is one that awakens a painful care in her, makes tenderness surge through her at each of his thrusts, makes her ache with her love for him. It is a most strange sensation indeed: now, it seems as if she had been aching with but lust when he had been sodomising her. 

"What _is_ this?" she slurs, her eyes unfocused. "What are you doing to me?"

"Loving you, my sweet," he says, kissing her moans from her lips. And now it is his smile that is delirious, his laughter high and most unmanly even as he lies buried within her flesh. "Am I to take it you are enjoying it as much as I am?"

"It feels--different," she says. "Slower, somehow, but wonderful, Jaffar, _wonderful._ "

"I agree," he says, letting go of her legs so that he can cup her head, thrust into her more lazily, now. "Sodomy is fast and sharp, but this--oh, I could spend all night doing this."

"Careful. I might ask you to prove that," she says, ruffling his hair.

"Mm. But you aren't stroking yourself."

"Why the hurry?" 

"Call it my selfishness," he says, kissing her nose. "You do look so beautiful when you come undone. And I am curious as to how you will look this time," he says, kneading her breasts, kissing her mouth. 

She moans, clutching him with her legs, sinking her fingers into his hair. "I never got to see your face as you came," she whispers. "Would you give me that?"

"Gladly," he says, answering her kiss, "but I would give you pleasure first. Some women can't even reach release this way--"

"Shh!" she cries, puts a finger to his lips. "You're talking like a physician again."

"All right," he laughs. "But I do insist on one thing, my lady."

"And what's that?"

He slides out of her and lies down on his back. "That you ride me. As you did before." 

And as he lies there, smiling, beckoning to her, he seems thirty years younger: his gladness, his wonder that of a youth as she slowly sits astride him and takes him inside of herself. There is a little pain, still, but the way he now moans, the way the sound reverberates through his body into hers, oh--she trembles, has to brace her hands upon his chest.

"Jaffar..."

He combs hair from her face and kisses her softly. "Does it hurt?"

"No," she murmurs, rocking upon him a little.

"Then, dance," he purrs, "take your pleasure of me, just as you meant to do."

A little nervous, she does as she is told: so many times, she had imagined this, had practiced the rolls and the thrusts the older women had taught her through their dances. But she finds she can't use her inner muscles now that she is so stretched, so impaled: at first, the pressure, the depth of the penetration feels so strange and uncomfortable she can barely move.

And he notices this, coaxes her slowly into movement through his hands on her hips, through his mouth on hers, through softly whispered words upon her lips. "There," he gasps when she attempts a longer roll, and oh, the look upon his face as she does it again, the way his lashes fall to his cheeks as she dares repeat it once more. And as she starts to lift herself higher, make her strokes longer, he is so lost she nearly asks if she is hurting him, so pained does he look in his pleasure. That she could do this to his body, with just a few movements like these? Is this what a man feels on top of the woman he loves--this power, this care as he pleasures her with his hips?

"Yassamin," he cries, his hands trembling upon her buttocks, his eyes squeezed shut, his breathing ragged. "Yassamin, Yassamin."

Oh, but he is breaking her heart, that tenderness his flesh has awoken in hers blossoming into a pain in her chest. "I am here, Jaffar," she says, kissing his cheeks, never ceasing her movements on top of him. It would be a crime to stop, now, and she couldn't even if she wanted to; the friction, the heat unbearable if she doesn't keep moving. And she lifts her hips higher, higher, giving him that squeeze she has always dreamt of giving a man: pulling up just enough so that only the head of his prick is nestled within her, so that she can squeeze the part just underneath the glans with her muscles, the part she has heard gives men the most pleasure of all. 

And he stares at her, his face red, shining from sweat, his eyes wide, his mouth trembling. "Yassamin, I--"

"Do I please my master?" she murmurs, warm from pleasure, her spine now as loose and as lithe as that of a serpent.

"Deeper, please," he gasps, licking his lips.

This surprises her. "I apologise. I did not realise--"

He but laughs. "That feels wonderful, but I would feel your entire weight upon me, my sweet." He slides his hands up her spine, pushes up with his hips, and she can tell that despite his grin, he is struggling to maintain control. When she begins to ride him deeper, a little more vigorously, he throws back his head and gasps.

"Yes. That's it, oh, that's it--let me feel you to the _root_ , God, your cunny, your cunny--"

And now she has to stroke herself, too, bring one hand to her clitoris as she leans upon his chest with her other hand, hunched over him. He is so deep inside of her now, beating into her with his hips in turn, so fast and so loud as their flesh slaps together, her cunny slick and sticky against his sack and she thinks she may die here, die--

And now he _howls,_ thrusting into her feverishly, so violently the bed creaks, the veins on his temples swollen from strain. "Yassamin, Yassamin--"

And he jerks underneath her, cries as if he is being slain, thrusts and thrusts, then falls slack upon the bed. And his face, his face! It is lost in its joy in the lantern light, like that of a dervish dancing with his God, ecstatic. She had called him a heathen, an unbeliever, but now that it is she who has made him into one, now that it's her breasts that his fingertips tremble upon in worship--oh, but now she blazes with her sin, the goddess he has made her into.

And still panting, he clutches her against himself, hugs her so tight he is crushing her, covers her mouth in kisses. "I must be dreaming," he murmurs. "Tell me this is a dream. Tell me I am about to awaken any moment."

" _This_ most certainly feels real," she laughs against his ear and squeezes him with her cunny, shivering in delight as his sperm now trickles out of her.

He yelps at this, then turns her onto her back, still nestled within her. "Don't think I will leave you unfulfilled, my lady," he says, nuzzling her neck. "But give me a moment to catch my breath." 

She stretches underneath him and sighs blissfully. "Gladly."

"Did you enjoy your ride?"

She strokes his cheek with the backs of her fingers. "I did. But I like this better," she says, wrapping her legs around him. 

"Of course you would," he says, rocking his hips playfully. "Now that _I_ have to do all the work." He shakes his head. "Some seductor I am. I bring you home and mean to win your love, and then get ravished in my own bed. You do realise this means we have to wed immediately?"

She closes her eyes and whispers a quick prayer. "There." Now, should there be a child, no demon can harm it.

"You are supposed to say the prayer _before_ the pen dips into the inkwell!" he scolds, rolling his hips with more force, now.

She giggles and strokes his back with her feet, urging him to continue. "You will be hearing me pray often from now on, husband."

He nuzzles her nose and smiles. "Call me that again." 

And it's mad, mad the way she finds even his crooked teeth inspire adoration in her, now. "Husband," she murmurs and kisses that jagged mouth of his, dares to dip her tongue in for a brief swirl. "I would you made me your wife once more."

He moans wickedly into her kiss, sucking her tongue into his mouth as he begins to thrust, and that suck makes her scream into his mouth, her cunny squeezing around his cock again and again and again. Oh, but it feels wonderful, now that he is moving into her lazily, so sated himself he can focus on but her pleasure. And gladly, she is pleasured: she wraps her limbs around him and lets him take her tongue, her cunny, rippling around him in warm, soft waves. She wonders whether men, too, dance when they are alone together, or whether it's in combat training that he has learned how to use his hips like this: soon, her mouth comes off his because she has to gasp for breath, has to moan out loud at the tremors he sends cascading through her with each thrust. 

"Jaffar," she cries, so loud she must be hurting his ear; clawing at him so violently his sweat gathers underneath her fingernails. His scent roils from him, the ambergris heavy, fragrant around them, seeping from his skin into hers, perfuming her flesh with his. "More," she cries, clawing at him again and again, "more."

"Lower," he growls, loud himself when she skims his buttocks with her fingertips. "Grab a good hold of them, wife. Show me how you want it."

And it's ridiculous, but she laughs and laughs, smacking his buttocks, sinking her nails into them. "Like this?"

"Yes," he laughs, breathless, huffing through his nose as he buries himself in her completely. "Guide me."

And she does, kneading his arse, relishing the way his hips twitch when she presses him cruelly with her nails, whenever she skims the cleft of his buttocks and spreads him, smacks him. But soon enough, her laughter dies and her hands still: he strikes a part in her that makes her howl in pleasure, and unable to bear it, she curls around him, sobbing.

"Do you like that?" he croons. "Hmm?"

"Please, don't stop."

"Stroke yourself," he says and guides one of her hands between her legs. "That's an order."

And she does, so close, now, so close that she thinks she will snap, fall apart, shatter in complete madness if she can't come now. "I'm sorry, Jaffar, I'm trying--"

"Then let me help you," he says, keeping his thrusts steady, long. "Look into my eyes, my child. Look into my eyes."

And it's hard to, his eyes now more frightening than they had ever been in her garden, her nightmares. For now his gaze is no longer that of a dirty old man peeking into a maiden's garden, no, no: his are eyes filled with a love true, a love genuine, mad, violent in its fury. The wide stare in them that of the blue, smokeless fire djinn and angels are born from, an unearthly bright blue even in this dim light, searing her with his passion, with--

\--and now that blue heat surges into her, flashes through her as if she were made of but white camphor, burning high, bright. He is within her, guiding her hand, guiding the very contractions of her womb, embracing her very self, whispering _Come with me, come for me, come love me, oh, Yassamin, rise up in love as you have made me rise in love for you, rise with me, come with me--_

And she cries, sobs into his shoulder, rubbing her cunny raw as she convulses around him in release. Finally, finally all is loosened from her, all her heat, all her care, all her love: she blazes around him, through him, takes each and every one of his steady, even thrusts within herself with a howl of bottomless ecstasy. In taking her he is giving her himself, giving himself entire, he the instrument of her salvation, yes, her salvation. Jaffar, Jaffar, the sorcerer who had first awakened love in her, had rescued her, had taken her to his home, made her his own. He has loved her so well, loves her so well this very moment, has vowed to love her forever, and on and on she pulses around him, her legs trembling as she clutches him to herself. 

"My love, my love," he murmurs, and it is only then that she realises he must have come as well, as now she is even wetter, as now his smile is double the one she had seen on his face before. "My Yassamin, my sweet Yassamin," he sighs and gathers her into his arms, he now the one curled up around her, holding her tight until she stops shaking, until both their heartbeats even, beating calmly in time.

***

As dawn breaks, he lies curled around her still, like a long, lean cat basking in the sunlight. She doesn't have the heart to wake him up, but once she stirs, so does he.

"Good morning, beloved," he murmurs, then closes his eyes once more, a smile tugging at his lips.

"Good morning," she says, pressing tighter against him. 

"I should call for breakfast," he says, still not opening his eyes.

"Don't you dare move an inch," she whispers, tightening her arm around him a little. "I would stay here a while longer." 

He chuckles. "So I take it that you do not desire to leave."

"Correct." Yet, his smile is so smug she has to dig her nails into his side a little, but oh, she had forgotten: that only makes him narrow his eyes and hiss in pleasure. 

"You are an animal," she huffs.

He nuzzles her face, triumphant. "Also correct. The lion saw the gazelle and took it," he purrs.

At that, she has to poke his ribs. "More like a cheetah, I should think. What will they think at the wedding, at my taking myself a man who's little more than a skeleton?"

He purses his mouth in an exaggerated pout. "Ooh, I should think they would find it healthy that I've snatched myself such a plump little thing to feast upon," he says and smacks her arse, then squeezes it in delight. "In fact, I'm feeling a little peckish this very moment."

And despite her protests, he slides down between her legs and buries his face in her cunny. Deliberately, he tickles her, nips at her folds, gives her mound such ridiculously sloppy kisses that she is squealing, flailing until she manages to clasp his head between her hands. "Stop!"

"You didn't let me call for breakfast. I must eat something lest I faint," he murmurs, blowing on her cunny, making her burst into giggles again. "You would not want to starve your husband to death, now would you?"

She gasps for breath, has to ruffle his hair. "Very well, but promise me we will leave for Baghdad today."

He kisses her wrist. "I promise. And I'll send a messenger ahead to tell them to begin the wedding preparations forthwith. Unless the palace is ready within two weeks, I shall have their heads."

"No executions!" she tightens her fist in his hair. "When my mother married, my father pardoned prisoners upon her request. And it's thanks to one very famous one you got between my buttocks in the first pla--Jaffar! Please, no, I am still sore--" 

"I am _not_ letting Nuwas out," he grumbles, withdrawing his finger from her arse. "He has insulted me enough," he huffs. "The bastard said I wasn't paying him well enough, so the last time I commissioned an elegy on myself, he sent me a poorly scribbled insult instead. And can you imagine the line he had the audacity to finish it with? _'If you think this poem is shit, it's because the man I wrote it about is a piece of shit!'_ "

She bursts into laughter once more. "He deserves to be made court poet for that."

"Enough, woman!" He smacks her arse. "Will you not let me breakfast in peace?"

"If you insist," she says and bites her lip. And she is still so sensitive from last night, the scratch of his moustache making her hips twitch against his mouth, his tongue so wonderful she finds herself swelling, wetting once more. "Please, don't stop."

He but looks at her from between her legs and chuckles straight into her cunny, rubbing and pressing his mouth against her clitoris. "I wouldn't dream of it," he murmurs between breaths, then laces his fingers with hers. "Wife."

"Husband," she whispers, stroking his back with her toes, filled with a happiness as bright as the morning light. 

***

END

***

**Author's Note:**

> Freely rebloggable Tumblr promo post for the fic [here.](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/108745060738/fic-a-surrender-in-ambergris-jaffarprincess)


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